How Did the Pursuit of Knowledge Begin?

Civilization started from the earliest people who lived simply through hunting animals and gathering fruits surrounding them. The day-to-day lives of these earliest people were so simple that they were just contented from the natural produce of Nature like fruits and other basic needs to keep them alive. 

But as people began to discover farming centuries ago, the first towns and cities were built in the Middle East. This is because, these people realized that they have various needs to be met as their population grows. Thus, their way of living started to change and science and technology began.

The Babylonians created numbers and mathematics, for them to keep track of their goods and taxes. The Egyptians studied astronomy, to help them make a calendar, the highly intelligent Greek thinkers like Archimedes, and the Engineers of the Roman Empire, they all laid the foundation of modern technology. 

From 3200 B.C. to 850 A.D., the ancient people were able to invent the wheel in Sumeria; the 365-day calendar device in Egypt; the numbers developed in Babylon; elements of Geometry written by Euclid; the mathematical for levers established by Archimedes; the building of the Great Walls of China (one of the Seven Wonders of the World); medical books written by Galen; Ptolemy who wrote Almagest; Algebra introduced by Al-Kharwarizmi.

All of these achievements by the ancients were almost lost with the collapse of the Roman Empire, which plunged Europe into the Dark Ages. The scientific thought continued to flourish in the Islamic east and further east in China. European scholars began to rediscover Greek and Roman science and make new discoveries of their own as eastern ideas gradually filtered into Europe in the 15th century. In the next century that followed, ideas established were incredible. The beginning of the world exploration.

Columbus sailed across the Atlantic in 1492 to discover a whole new, undreamed- of land. Copernicus showed that the earth is far from being the center of the universe and that the earth is just one of the planet circling around the sun.

Deep thinkers did not fully trust the ancient ideas, henceforth, the start of observation and further experiments began which had been the basis of the new approach to science. This had led to a huge range of discoveries such as Newton's laws of motion, Dalton's atoms, Darwin's theory of the evolution of life, right up to recent breakthroughs in the science of genetics.

History records show that from Christopher Columbus, who sailed across the Atlantic in 1492; Copernicus theory in 1543, and other amazing ideas, theories, inventions, and discoveries from 1610 to 1989. 

Galileo, who have Jupiter's moon through a telescope; Harvey, who showed how the heart circulates blood; Boyle, who introduced the idea of elements and compounds; Newton, who established his three laws of motion and his theory of gravity; Savery, who invents the first practical steam engine; Linnaeus groups plants into species and genera; Franklin, who showed that lightning is electricity; the Montgolfier bothers' balloon that carries two brothers aloft; Trevithick, who builds the first stem locomotive; Dalton, who proposed his atomic theory of chemical elements; Faraday and Henry, who found that electricity can be generated by magnetism; the first passenger railroad from Stockton to Darlington in England; Mendel, who discovered the basic laws of heredity; Darwin and Wallace, who suggested the theory of evolution by natural selection; Pasteur, who showed that many diseases are caused by germs; Lenoir, who builds the first internal combustion engine car; Maxwell, who proposed that light is electromagnetic radiation; Alexander Graham Bell, who send the first telephone message; Hertz, who discovered radio waves; Rontgen, who discovered X-rays; Thomson, who discovered electrons, and Becquerel, who discovered radioactivity; Marie and Pierre Curie, who discovered the radioactive elements radium and polonium; Planck, who suggested quantum theory; Orville and Wilbur Wright, who made the first controlled powered flight; Einstein's special and general theories of relativity; Ford's first mass-produced car, the model T; Rutherford, who showed that atom has a nucleus circled by electrons; Wegener, who suggested continental drift; Hubble, who realized that there are other galaxies and that the universe is expanding; Fleming, who discovered penicillin; Carothers, who develops nylon; Hahn and Strassman, who split a uranium atom; Shockley, Bardeen, and Brattain who invented the transistor; Crick and Watson, who showed that DNA, the gene molecules in living cells, has a double spiral shape; Sputnik, as the first spacecraft to orbit the earth; Armstrong and Aldrin, who were the first men on the moon; and Burners-Lee who creates the World Wide Web.

These changes through science and technology that modernize the present civilization is a far cry from the ancient people whose minds were not capable of doing something to change their lives. 

With these long list of theories, ideas, inventions, and discoveries of these intellects, their achievements have fueled a revolution in technology and continues to gather pace with the latest computer technology of today.

Tracing back the lineage of the ancient people, I am just wondering, if ever, that the next generations that followed, is it possible that those ancient people are the ancestors of either one of the founders of science and technology?